The Last Bastion of Liberal Democracy

I love libraries. Especially libraries in huge, marble-floored, mahogany-trimmed antebellum mansions like the old Lexington Public Library in Gratz Park.

I love librarians, who if they don't know absolutely everything there is to know about everything, know where to find it. Especially librarians (all of them) who in 2002 responded to the Patriot Act's requirement that they reveal the titles of books taken out by borrowers by telling Homeland Security to fuck off and die.

And I love the fact that my fellow Kentuckians love our libraries too.

From the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, via AP:

Reports from Kentucky's 118 public library systems show that there were not only a record number of visits, but a record number of books and other items that were checked out.

Libraries file the statistics each year with the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. In 2011, the reports show more than 20 million patrons visited libraries around the state and checked out more than 30 million books and other items.

Yes, libraries may have become the refuge of the poor and unemployed who can't afford an internet connection, but that just makes them more valuable. At the library, the most impoverished person has no-charge free access to the same universe of knowledge available to the most obscenely wealthy parasites.

Go to your public library. It's right down the street. Take your children. Take your neighbors' children. Take random children who run through your yard.

The library is the epitome of civilization by public service in a liberal democracy. Repugs may slash the social safety net and privatize government, but as long as the library offers the world free to all who pass through its doors, the American Ideal lives.